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The launch conference of a new multi-academy trust (MAT) in South Leicestershire was held in Market Harborough on 25 August 2016. Nearly 300 staff from the 7 schools in the MAT were present to hear from each of the trustees and headteachers about their aims for the Trust. They also heard an inspiring address on learning without limits from Dame Alison Peacock. I made the following speech:

It is a huge privilege to be here this morning, at the launch of our own multi-academy trust. For me, this is a positive and exciting step on my journey in education.

Eight years ago, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), of which I was general secretary, published a book called Achieving more together: adding value through partnership. School partnerships at the time were often informal and could be dropped at the first sign of trouble. Good ones were few and far between.

You don’t need me to tell you that much has happened in education since 2008 – lots of things we haven’t liked, as well as some good things, not least that the government has acknowledged the power of partnership and the benefits of encouraging schools to work together in more formal arrangements.

Thankfully, the system has moved on from the culture of competition that was prevalent when I was a headteacher in the 1980s and 1990s, when the government believed that schools would improve if they competed more. Politicians set school against school and, inevitably, the hierarchy of schools became sharper and the job more difficult for schools that were not at the top of the hierarchy.

Now, some competition between schools remains – after all, we all want our school to give the best possible education to its children. But I am delighted to see that the national policy climate has largely moved from competition to collaboration and partnership working between schools.

As a governor of St Andrew’s in North Kilworth, where I live, for the last 16 years, I have long recognised that the future for small to medium sized primary schools lies in working together with other schools in formal partnerships. Multi-academy trusts, it seems to me, are exactly the right format for schools like ours. Having spent the last three years exploring local possibilities, I was delighted when the opportunity came for St Andrew’s to become a member of the Learn Academies Trust.

The top criterion for successful school partnerships is having a shared set of values. And as I get to know the schools in this partnership, I have absolutely no doubt that we fulfil this criterion. By putting these values into action together, we can achieve so much more for the children in our schools.

There is plenty of research available now on school partnerships. Evidence tells us that successful partnership working between schools in multi-academy trusts is based on nine essential ingredients:
• Shared values
• Shared aims
• A relentless focus on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment – a compelling curriculum, skilful pedagogy and rich assessment
• A strong belief in the value and potential of every child, no matter what their background
• A deep commitment to professional development across the whole Trust
• Commitment to the success of other schools in the Trust as much as to the success of our own school – one for all and all for one
• Quality assurance. That is, rigorous self-evaluation and peer review of the quality of work in all our schools
• Sharing data and using it analytically to improve our performance, and
• Using resources where they are most needed in the Trust

Every one of us – school staff, governors, trustees – must be completely committed to work together in all these areas.

The Trust – and today’s launch – are all about school improvement. The whole point of coming together is nothing to do with jumping through a hoop created by Ofsted or by the government.

It is because we believe that we are stronger together than apart; that we can achieve more for our children as a group of schools than we can on our own.

To build a good school, Ofsted and government guidelines can be followed; to build an outstanding school requires something different. So it is with a group of schools – and that must be our aim together.

Doing this will need us to grab the opportunities of joining forces
– to focus on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment;
– to have high aspirations and expectations – learning without limits
– to be innovative and to encourage responsible risk-taking; and
– to challenge each other continually to improve.

Our aim must be to spread the best practice in each school across the whole Trust – the best work on phonics, the best literacy and mathematics teaching, the most interesting exploration of science and of the world around us, the best in sport and the arts. In short, we must aim to give the best of everything to every child in our schools.

Our approach must be led by our shared values, creating a sense of Trust identity and shared responsibility for what happens in our own school and in all the other schools in the Trust; to unlock the potential of every child, whatever it takes; to feel as responsible for giving children in other Trust schools outstanding educational opportunities as the children in our own school.

Part of our culture must be to listen: listen to the pupil voice, and listen to the voices of parents, so that we improve our practice and the children improve their learning. That is a really important part of the message we have heard this morning from Alison Peacock.

As members of the Trust, we must be evidence-informed and outward-looking, to other schools in the Trust, to our partner schools in the Affinity Teaching School Alliance, and beyond to excellent practice elsewhere and to the best education research available. Learning about local, regional, national and international best practice will become part of the normal professional life for every one of us, whatever our role.

We may not have as many disadvantaged pupils as some other schools and trusts, but Every Child Matters and every disadvantaged pupil deserves our extra support if they are to succeed in life. It must be part of the moral purpose of all of us that we do what extra is needed to level the playing field for these children.

Evidence shows that poor teaching disproportionately holds back disadvantaged children by about half a year, compared with their more fortunate classmates, whereas excellent teaching disproportionately benefits deprived children. This is an important reason why we must continue to strive for excellence.

I have visited many schools that have academy status and many of them are part of trusts. Lots of these schools are using their status to be innovative and to improve their practice, but not all. Some just continue to jog along in the same way, rejoicing in not being part of the local authority, but not much else. They are missing so much. As a group of 7 schools, we will have more opportunities ourselves, as Trust staff, to develop professionally.

We can achieve more together for all our children than we can as individual schools.

Every school in the partnership – and every member of staff – will be able to both give and take from the Trust: to give of your best and share it with others across the 7 schools, and to take from the best practice elsewhere in order to help to provide the best possible education for every child.

In coming together as Learn Academies Trust for the first time, we must all be determined to make the most of the opportunities offered by the Trust to build an outstanding group of schools. Outstanding in the Ofsted sense, yes, but more important than that, outstanding in the way that every member of staff develops professionally; outstanding in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment; and outstanding in the breadth, depth and quality of education that we give to every child.

This is an immensely exciting opportunity and I look forward to being with you on the journey to making the Learn Academies Trust a successful venture for everyone in the partnership. Together, we will achieve amazing things.

Bringing together the conclusions from the NFER report on pupil premium of 2015, the Ofsted survey report of 2013 and the August 2015 blog from my two years as national pupil premium champion, (references to these three documents at the end), I have listed the building blocks of success in schools where disadvantaged pupils are doing well.

These provide a good guide on which to base school strategy for raising the attainment of disadvantaged young people and closing the gap. The points could be used as a checklist of current practice.

School culture
– An ethos of attainment for all pupils
– An unerring focus on high quality teaching
– Clear, responsive leadership, with high aspirations and expectations
– 100 per cent buy-in from all staff, with all staff conveying positive and aspirational messages to disadvantaged pupils
– Evidence (especially the EEF Toolkit) is used to decide on which strategies are likely to be most effective in overcoming the barriers to learning of disadvantaged pupils. Particular consideration is given to high-impact, low-cost strategies.
– Able to demonstrate positive impact of all strategies
– In-depth training for all staff on chosen strategies
– Every effort is made to engage parents/ carers in the education and progress of their child

Individual support
– Identification of the main barriers to learning for disadvantaged pupils
– Individualised approach to addressing barriers to learning and emotional support
– Focus on outcomes for all individual pupils
– Frequent monitoring of the progress of every disadvantaged pupil
– When a pupil’s progress slows, interventions are put in place rapidly
– Teachers know which pupils are eligible for pupil premium
– The needs are recognised of disadvantaged children in specific groups, e.g. high ability pupils, looked-after children

School organisation
– Deployment of the best staff to support disadvantaged pupils – developing the skills of existing teachers and TAs
– Excellent collection, analysis and use of data relating to individual pupils and groups
– Performance management is used to reinforce the importance of this agenda
– Effectiveness of teaching assistants is evaluated and, if necessary, improved through training and improved deployment
– Governors are trained on pupil premium
– Pupil premium funding is ring-fenced to spend on the target group
– Effectiveness of interventions is evaluated frequently and adjustments made as necessary
– A senior leader has oversight of how PP funding is being spent

As my two-year stint as National Pupil Premium Champion draws to a close, it feels like the right time to take stock. The champion role, as set out by David Laws, has given me the opportunity to act as an independent conduit between the government and schools. On the one hand, I have fed back to the Department for Education the messages that school leaders have given me about issues they are facing in making an impact with the pupil premium (PP); on the other hand, I have spoken to nearly 15,000 school leaders at 150 conferences and meetings about how best to develop a strategy that fits their schools’ specific needs.

What lessons have I learned during this time? What progress has been made by schools with the PP? Should the government change the PP policy? What are the main challenges for the future? Can the gap be substantially narrowed – at age 11, at age 16, and in the life chances of young people?

What lessons have I learned during this time?

Schools that are most successful in their use of the PP adopt a range of strategies, well targeted at the needs of their pupils. I have noted 12 areas of focus for PP policy and practice in these schools:
– Excellent collection, analysis and use of data relating to individual pupils and groups.
– Unerring focus on the quality of teaching.
– Identification of the main barriers to learning for PP-eligible pupils.
– Frequent monitoring of the progress of every PP-eligible pupil.
– When a pupil’s progress slows, interventions are put in place rapidly.
– Every effort is made to engage parents and carers in the education and progress of their child.
– If poor attendance is an issue, this is addressed as a priority.
– Evidence (especially the Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit) is used to decide on which strategies are likely to be most effective in overcoming the barriers to learning.
– Staff (teachers and support staff) are trained in depth on the chosen strategies.
– 100 per cent buy-in from all staff to the importance of the PP agenda is essential, with all staff conveying positive and aspirational messages to PP-eligible pupils. Performance management is used to reinforce the importance of PP effectiveness.
– Effectiveness of teaching assistants is evaluated and, if necessary, increased through training and improved deployment.
– Governors are trained on PP.

Apart from noting these common characteristics of PP practice in successful schools, I have resisted the temptation to tell schools how to spend the PP, but instead have set out a process for deciding what policies best suit each school’s individual circumstances. This process is summarised in my blog: “Ten point plan on spending the pupil premium successfully” at https://johndunfordconsulting.wordpress.com/.
The ten steps in this plan are:
Step 1. Set an ambition for what you want your school to achieve with PP funding.
Step 2. The process of decision-making on PP spending starts with an analysis of the barriers to learning for PP pupils.
Step 3. Decide on the desired outcomes of your PP spending.
Step 4. Against each desired outcome, identify success criteria.
Step 5. Evaluate the effectiveness and impact of your current PP strategies and change them if necessary.
Step 6. Research the evidence of what works best.
Step 7. Decide on the optimum range of strategies to be adopted.
Step 8. Staff training in depth.
Step 9. Monitor the progress of PP-eligible pupils frequently.
Step 10. Put an audit trail on the school website for PP spending.

What progress has been made by schools with pupil premium?

Attainment of PP-eligible young people is rising and the gap between their attainment and that of more advantaged pupils is closing. This is happening more quickly at age 11 than at 16, where many other policy factors come into play. The 2015 National Audit Office report on pupil premium (1) made a fair assessment of progress, noting the autonomy that schools have to spend PP and the increasing use of evidence to inform their PP strategies. (The NAO report also noted the £2.4 billion per annum that is allocated by local authorities as deprivation funding, but without the direct accountability that exists for the £2.5 billion PP funding.)

Schools have become more analytical in their use of PP funding, moving away from spending largely on additional teaching assistants and subsidising school trips that Ofsted noted in its 2012 report on PP (2) and addressing the individual needs of pupils in order to increase their readiness to learn.

Schools have also increasingly used the finding of the 2011 Sutton Trust report on teacher impact being proportionately greater for disadvantaged children to spend PP funding on raising the quality of teaching. (3) “Individual need and classroom rigour” is the excellent mantra for one school that is highly successful in raising the attainment of disadvantaged children.

As National Pupil Premium Champion, I have emphasised the need to put special effort into two categories of PP-eligible pupils – looked-after children and bright disadvantaged young people.

The statistics for looked-after children are a scar on our society. 12% of looked-after children achieved 5+ GCSEs at A*-CEM, compared with 53% of others. 33% of care leavers become NEET, compared with 13% of all young people. 6% of care leavers go to university – which is less than the percentage of care leavers who go to prison – compared with 40% of others.

Too many bright PP-eligible children have low expectations thrust upon them and fall behind their less bright advantaged peers. 15% of highly able pupils who score in the top 10% nationally at age 11 fail to achieve in the top 25% at GCSE. Boys, and particularly PP-eligible boys, are most likely to be in this missing talent group. (4)

Should the government change the PP policy?

My short answer to that is No. Pupil premium is a Heineken policy, reaching the disadvantaged children – particularly in small towns and rural areas – that previous policies, such as Excellence in Cities, did not reach.

The government does not tell schools how to spend the money, but holds them to account for the impact they make with it on the progress and attainment of disadvantaged young people. That is a rare example in education of intelligent accountability.

The 2015 Conservative manifesto said that it would continue PP funding, but whether ministers will want to put a Tory gloss on a coalition policy remains to be seen. The new early years PP will – and should – be a priority area.

What are the main challenges for the future?

Headteachers are rightly worried at the effect of other government policies, such as the bedroom tax and the benefits cap, increasing child poverty and making it tougher for schools to close the gap. Cuts in other local support services for disadvantaged young people have made the task of schools more difficult too. It is as if the Department for Education, through the PP, is trying to increase social mobility, while some other government departments are reducing it.

The increasingly difficult school funding situation represents a further major challenge and the temptation for schools to use pupil premium funding to plug other budget gaps should be resisted if disadvantaged children are to receive the additional support that they need.

Can the gap be substantially narrowed – at age 11, at age 16, and in the life chances of young people?

Schools have shown that, with the extra resources of the PP and a strong determination to improve the life chances of all disadvantaged young people, the gap can be narrowed.

Schools need to evaluate regularly the impact of their PP spending and may benefit from an external review. Both for internal and external reviews, school leaders have found the Teaching Schools Guide useful. (5)

The evidence of what works is there for all to see, but it needs to be disseminated. There will be no National Pupil Premium Champion to do this, as I have tried to do since 2013. The Education Endowment Foundation will continue to fly the pupil premium flag, but Regional School Commissioners, local authorities, multi-academy trusts and teaching school alliances will need to have pupil premium at or near the top of their priorities if individual schools are to be adequately supported in their work with disadvantaged young people.

The social, moral and educational case for giving additional support to children born less fortunate than others remains as strong as ever. Every school needs a Pupil Premium Champion.

John Dunford was National Pupil Premium Champion from September 2013 to August 2015

Schools need to adopt effective strategies to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. There is plenty of evidence about what works well, but not all these successful strategies will be appropriate to the particular context in which a school is working.
The methodology described below sets out a process to help schools decide on the optimum strategies and to maintain efficient and effective use of pupil premium (PP) funding over time. With thought and planning on the part of a school, this money really can make a difference to the lives of disadvantaged children.
£2.5 billion of PP funding in 2014-15 is a lot of money to put into schools for a single initiative. We saw these levels of funding for the national strategies in the post-1997 era, but this is different. This isn’t the government telling schools what to do in increasingly mind-numbing detail, as has been the case so often during the last 30 years; this is the government saying to schools: ‘Increasing social mobility is important for the health of our society and you, the schools, have a key role to play. So we are giving you significant extra funding for every deprived pupil on your roll. We will hold you to account for the impact you make with this money, but we won’t tell you how to do it. Over to you.’ Rarely has school autonomy seemed so big, so important or so scary.
Underpinning the process described below, schools should focus on the quality of teaching. There is solid evidence that poor teaching disproportionately disadvantages deprived children. Equally, evidence tells us that excellent teaching disproportionately benefits them. So high quality teaching must be at the core of all pupil premium work. It follows that it is legitimate to spend PP funding on raising the quality of teaching.
Step 1. Set an ambition for what you want your school to achieve with PP funding.
Some of the schools aiming high express this ambition in terms of becoming one of the 17 per cent of schools in which those on free school meals (FSM) do better than the average for all pupils nationally.
Step 2. The process of decision-making on PP spending starts with an analysis of the barriers to learning for PP pupils.
Barriers to learning might include poor parenting, limited access to language, poor literacy levels, poor attendance, low aspirations, low expectations, narrow experience of life outside school. Each school will want to make its own list.
Step 3. Decide on the desired outcomes of your PP spending.
Schools should decide for themselves what outcomes they are aiming for with PP funding, but these might include: raising attainment of PP-eligible pupils; closing the gap between PP pupils and others in the school; closing the gap between the school’s PP pupils and all pupils nationally; improving attendance; reducing exclusions; accelerated progress by all PP pupils; increasing the engagement of parents with their children’s education and with the school; increasing opportunities for PP-eligible pupils and broadening their experience.
Step 4. Against each desired outcome, identify success criteria.
Against each of the desired outcomes which the school decides to pursue, school leaders should set one or more success criteria. This could be expressed as a number – ‘closing the gap between the attainment of PP-eligible pupils and that of all pupils nationally by x per cent this year and by y per cent the following year’. For outcomes such as parental engagement, there are no easy metrics, so schools need to discuss what success looks like for them against these aims.
Step 5. Evaluate your current PP strategies.
Having set out a range of desired outcomes and put success criteria against them, schools can evaluate their current strategies and assess how successful each of the strategies is in pursuit of the stated outcomes.
Consider how much of your PP spending is on year 6 or year 11 pupils and how much on younger pupils. What are the percentages?
Consider how much you are spending on the needs of individual pupils and how much on whole-school strategies. What are the percentages?
There are no ‘right answers’ for the proportion of PP funding spent on different groups, but it will help your evaluation to know these figures.
A lot of PP funding is spent on additional classroom assistants, so schools should use the research report on the deployment and impact of support staff (http://fdslive.oup.com/www.oup.com/oxed/primary/literacy/osi_teaching_assistants_report_web.pdf?region=uk ) to help them evaluate the effectiveness of learning assistants and ensure that they are working in the most effective way.
Step 6. Research the evidence of what works best.
Schools need to look outwards for evidence of what works well elsewhere. I recommend three places to look initially.
First, seek out excellent practice in other schools, using http://apps.nationalcollege.org.uk/closing_the_gap/index.cfm and http://www.pupilpremiumawards.co.uk and consider how you might adapt their successful PP strategies to the context of your school.
Second, use the excellent Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/, looking first at the strategies that make the most difference (feedback, metacognition, peer tutoring, etc) and think about how these could best be used in your school.
Third, study the Ofsted report on pupil premium, published in February 2013, where there is a list of successful approaches on page 3: http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/resources/pupil-premium-how-schools-are-spending-funding-successfully-maximise-achievement. Evaluate PP strategies in your school in the light of the points made in this report.
Step 7. Decide on the optimum range of strategies to be adopted.
Using the evidence gathered from other schools and through your research in the EEF Toolkit and elsewhere, involve the leadership team, staff and governing body in deciding on the best strategies to use in the context of your school.
These should not be seen as separate from your other efforts to raise attainment and accelerate progress. Make sure that the PP strategies are embedded in your overall school improvement plan.
Consider too how you can adapt the curriculum to benefit disadvantaged pupils. The question ‘What curriculum does most for disadvantaged pupils?’ promotes rich discussion among staff and governors about the knowledge and skills that will maximise the life chances of young people from less well-off backgrounds. See the Whole Education website (www.wholeeducation.org) to learn about how Whole Education Network schools are developing a fully rounded education for their pupils as part of their ‘closing the gap’ and raising achievement strategies.
Don’t forget the needs of bright PP-eligible pupils. You can spend funding on them to push them further and also to broaden their expectations and opportunities. Oxbridge visits and music tuition are fruitful examples.
Another group that especially needs additional help and support is the group of looked-after children, who have historically generally obtained very poor qualifications. Each school may have few of them, but heads need to work with the local ‘virtual head’ to deploy resources effectively for these children with their varied backgrounds and needs.
And, don’t forget, excellent teaching can be the best strategy of all for raising the attainment of PP-eligible pupils and closing the gap.
Step 8. Staff training.
There are no short cuts to success with the strategies you adopt. If they are to be successful, in-depth training for all staff must take place
Step 9. Monitor the progress of PP-eligible pupils frequently.
Collect, analyse and use your data to maximum effect in monitoring the progress of every PP-eligible pupil. This should be done frequently, so that interventions can be put in place quickly, as soon as a pupil is starting to slip.
Step 10. Put an audit trail on the school website for PP spending.
The school needs to put in a prominent place on the website an account of PP spending. The head and governing body are held to account for the impact that the school is making with PP funding. This can be done in tabular form, listing each strategy, its cost, evaluation reports on its effectiveness, and its impact. In addition, schools can use anonymised case studies of the difference that PP funding is making to the lives of pupils.
This also fulfils the governing body’s legal obligation to report to parents on how the PP is being spent and the impact that is being made with it.

I start with the words of Somerset Maugham: “To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
And, more positively, the remarkable Native American writer, Sherman Alexie, from his personal experience of surviving his childhood ailments: “If one reads enough books one has a fighting chance. Or better, one’s chances of survival increase with each book one reads.”
I am delighted that one of five aims of the Bradford Literature Festival is: “To raise aspirations and literacy attainment levels in a sustainable and measurable manner.” This will be my focus this evening.
You are aiming for (I quote): “a stimulating pageant of words, debates and ideas” and “an enriching literary and cultural experience.”
Indeed, no less than the cultural and economic regeneration of Bradford is your dream.
The Festival will be a dialogue between different parts of the Bradford community, seeing its diversity – rightly, in my view – as a strength.
With these aims for the community, and improving aspirations and literacy in particular, this means reaching out to all, especially the disadvantaged.
In my role as National Pupil Premium Champion, I work with school leaders and teachers on the most effective ways of using pupil premium funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged children.
Bradford statistics for the achievement of disadvantaged pupils are right on the national average. This is slightly better than Leeds, but well behind London, Manchester, Birmingham, Oldham, Rochdale and nearly all places with a diverse community.
Statistics show that the achievement gap is smallest in ethnically diverse communities of all sorts, and largest among the white British community. So Bradford should be doing better. Being average nationally is actually being below average for a community like this.
Improving literacy, especially among younger children, is the key to improving their future life chances and it’s great that this Festival aims to do this. The task is closing the gap and raising achievement: helping everyone up the hill of learning, but helping those lower down the hill through no fault of their own to climb the hill that bit faster.
In the words of Andreas Schleicher of the OECD: “Our data shows it doesn’t matter if you go to a school in Britain, Finland or Japan, students from a privileged background tend to do well everywhere. What really distinguishes education systems is their capacity to deploy resources where they can make the most difference. [The] effect [of] a teacher anywhere in the world is a lot bigger for a student who doesn’t have a privileged background than for a student who has lots of educational resources [at home].”
Interestingly, children on free school meals (FSM), on average, do best in schools where there are very few of them or in schools where there are lots of them.
In these successful schools, there is clear recognition of
– the benefits of early intervention;
– the need to improve literacy and maths, so children can fully engage with all subjects;
– the benefits of improving the engagement of parents in their children’s education;
– the importance of raising aspirations and, just as importantly, expectations, among children and their parents;
– and, above all, having an excellent quality of teaching, which evidence shows is disproportionately beneficial to disadvantaged children – who are hit particularly badly by poor teaching, with no private tutors to compensate for a school’s shortcomings.
Like most headteachers, I am an optimist and, in my National Pupil Premium Champion role, I encourage heads to raise their ambition for their schools to be one of the 17 per cent of schools where the children on FSM do better than the average of all children across the country – so it is possible to close the gap;
Schools have complete autonomy to decide what to spend the money on and what will have the greatest impact in their context. This provides great opportunities for arts organisations.
As well as raising attainment and narrowing the gap, they might decide that their school needs to spend money on improving the attendance of children on FSM; or improving engagement with families; or developing these young people’s skills; or broadening their experiences; or ensuring that they do not leave school and join the NEETs (not in education, employment or training).
I encourage them to “stop looking up and start looking out”: to move away from the 25 years that the teaching profession has spent waiting for the next government announcement of what, or, heaven help us, how to teach.
Look out to the excellent practice in other schools, including the schools that have won pupil premium awards.
And become curriculum planners again, as my generation of teachers and school leaders used to be.
My definition of the school curriculum is everything that happens to a child in school – not just in lessons. And that creates huge opportunities for schools to think not only about what knowledge they want their pupils to acquire, but also what skills and personal qualities they want their young people to develop and what additional experiences they want their pupils to have.
I have the privilege of being chair of a wonderful organisation called Whole Education, which believes that every child has a right to a fully-rounded education, way beyond the narrow confines of test and examination syllabuses.
And a planned curriculum can do just that; not teaching knowledge and skills separately, but as warp and weft of the same learning process.
In the words of Andreas Schleicher again, on the basis of what he has seen happening in schools in the tiger economies of the Far East:
“Today schooling needs to be much more about ways of thinking, involving creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making.” Not just a limited range of knowledge, but wider knowledge, the arts and these broader attributes too.
Singapore has cut its national curriculum by 30 per cent to make way for such things.
As Professor Guy Claxton has said: Too often, the pressures of accountability on schools mean that “children are prepared for a life of tests, but not for the tests of life.”
This is made worse by the inspection model to which schools are subjected, which encourages tactical game-playing.
I love the story of the inspector who was on his way to a school and his car broke down. Two children nearby, both very knowledgeable about cars, offered to help. The inspector was most grateful, but asked them why they weren’t in school. “We’re the slow ones,” they said, “the head told us that an inspector was coming today and that we had to stay off school.” These children had knowledge and they had skills, but not in conventional ways that are judged by our narrow inspection criteria.
A whole education is not either knowledge or skills; it is a both/and education that educates the whole child in the examination curriculum and the arts and broader ways.
And its basis is the need for a high degree of literacy, from which all else flows – which is why I am so glad that schools are working with, and spending their pupil premium funding on, the many literacy charities that exist, nationally and locally across the UK.
– The National Literacy Trust (I have to mention this first – one of my former pupils, Abigail Moss, is the NLT’s deputy director) with its “reading with parents” scheme, the vitally important Read On Get On campaign, and is launching the Bradford Literacy Campaign next week.
– Reading Matters, a Yorkshire-based network of 100 volunteer reading mentors, also training older pupils as reading leaders.
– The Tutor Trust, which operates in Manchester, but will spread elsewhere, I hope, under which university students are trained and paid to provide extra tuition to children whose parents cannot afford it.
– Beanstalk, which recruits volunteers to read with children in school.
– The Book Trust, encouraging people of all ages to enjoy books.
All these organisations, and more, help children to develop the skill of reading and, of equal importance, the love of reading and of books.
Or Kindles, of course.
In my house Kindles are a marmite issue. One of us loves his Kindle; the other is a great books person.
As Stephen Fry has said: “Books are no more threatened by Kindles, than are stairs by elevators.”
I like my Kindle, but I like the feel of a good book in my hands too.
At a time when one in 3 children live in households that do not own a book, we have to use every tool we can to get people reading, to nourish their imaginations and build their self-confidence and self-esteem, as reading does.
That is why it is so important to work with parents and families in disadvantaged communities, where most of these bookless families are.
And with children whose daily experience of family life is that shopping is more important than learning.
Reflecting on more serious cases, Roy Blatchford of the National Education Trust asked the question: “Have you ever met a mugger who’s read Middlemarch?”
As the National Literacy Trust has reported, the UK has a big challenge to face, with the youngest generation having literacy scores no better than the eldest generation. And NLT reminds us that poor literacy is positively correlated with lower earnings, poverty, poorer health and crime, with 48 per cent of offenders in custody having a reading age below the expected level of an 11 year old.
We all know about the importance of mothers in developing children’s literacy and learning. A recent study has found the education of fathers is the most important factor in a child’s success at school.
Studies show that reading a variety of literature independently by the age of 15 is the single biggest indicator of future success, outweighing negative factors such as socio-economic background or family situation.
Indeed an Oxford University study of 17,000 people born in 1970 found that teenagers who read books are significantly more likely to end up in a professional job than those who don’t.
With its community focus, reaching out across the diversity of Bradford, this Festival will have much to contribute to the lives of these children and their families. As you start on your journey, what better place to begin than literacy, the foundation stone of learning?
Literacy changes lives and we need to move away from the arid debate about phonics or real books, with government ministers pronouncing in favour of phonics, when it is well known that the best way into literacy is through both phonics and real books.
Not just in school, but in the home and in the community too.
National education politics can be so frustrating, as so many teachers will tell you. All Westminster politicians had an education, so that makes them experts and they think that allows them to make pronouncements on education in ways that health ministers wouldn’t dream of doing. And so the winds of change in education policy blow hither and thither, and the policy pendulum swings back and forth, obeying Randolph Churchill’s famous recipe for political action – “If at first you don’t succeed, shuffle the cards and try again.”
Or, as a taxi driver said to me once, “The government ought to find answers to these solutions.”
I have long noted that the relationship between government and teachers has been based on trust and understanding. We don’t trust them and they don’t understand us!
Education is too important to be constantly interfered with by secretaries of state whose average length of office since 1944 is 2.2 years. That is why it is so good to see such a broad range of organisations supporting the Festival and determining to move it forward in a non-political way.
In the words of your website: “The Festival will take literacy out of the classroom and embed it in everyday living by inspiring parents and children.”
As a relatively recent convert to the joys of the Hay Festival, with its big programme for children (always the first events to be fully booked), I have seen how parents and children can develop a shared love of reading at events such as these. Where Hay has grown over its 25-year history, I am sure that the Bradford Festival will grow too, with your support.
The cultural life of the whole community can, and must, be nourished by your efforts in ways that would have made that chronicler of northern culture, Richard Hoggart, proud.
It is 57 years since the publication of The Uses of Literacy, in which Hoggart wrote: “We are moving towards the creation of a mass culture; that the remnants of what was at least in part an urban culture ‘of the people’ are being destroyed; and that the new mass culture is in some important respects less healthy than the often crude culture it is replacing.”
Hoggart would surely have been even more concerned about the culture of our country today than he was then.
I am delighted that an important part of the Festival’s work will be in schools and with children. As the more recent Yorkshire author, Gervase Phinn, whom I have come to know well over many years, has said: “Schools should be for the disadvantaged what the home is for the advantaged.”
To take just one example, I heard Derek Jacobi speak several years ago. He told us that he wouldn’t have been a professional actor if it hadn’t been for the drama at his school in the East End of London. “Inspirational teachers took us”, he said, “on endless trips to London theatres.” Or, in the sporting field, think of the influence that a PE teacher had on the life of Mo Farah. Or the influence that a teacher had on the lives of each of us here this evening.
I have always believed that the experience that children have of the arts in school stays with them all their lives, much more than what they learn in technology, for example.
That is why, as a headteacher, I started a termly artist-in-residence scheme in my school, bringing painters, sculptors, potters, poets, authors, playwrights, drama producers, composers, musical performers, and more, from the wider region into school.
I knew it would have a profound impact on the young people with whom they worked. What I didn’t realise when I started the scheme was the impact that it would have on the teachers too, broadening and deepening their expertise, and thus passing on the benefits to future generations of pupils.
As I heard the late, great Professor Ted Wragg say, and as I have often heard Sir Ken Robinson say: all children are born with their ‘learning switch’ set to ON. Some regrettably have it switched to OFF during their school years, saying things like “I’m no good at maths” or “I don’t like reading books.” The teacher’s job is to keep all those learning switches in the ON position and you, the Festival and community leaders here in Bradford, can hugely help teachers to do that in this great city.
So reflecting on the importance of literature in the lives of young people, let me end with Professor Brian Cox, not the famous young physicist but the former professor of English at Manchester, and his poem about his English teacher:
English Teacher

Petite, white-haired Miss Cartwright
Knew Shakespeare off by heart,
Or so we pupils thought.
Once in the stalls at the Old Vic
She prompted Lear when he forgot his part.
Ignorant of Scrutiny and Leavis,
She taught Romantic poetry,
Dreamt of gossip with dead poets.
To an amazed sixth form once said:
‘How good to spend a night with Shelley.’
In long war years she fed us plays,
Sophocles to Shaw’s St Joan.
Her reading nights we named our Courting Club,
Yet always through the blacked-out streets
One boy left the girls and saw her home.
When she closed her eyes and chanted
‘Ode to a Nightingale’
We laughed yet honoured her devotion.
We knew the man she should have married
Was killed at Passchendaele.

If the Bradford Literature Festival can make that kind of impression on the minds and lives of your young people, it will have achieved much.
I pay tribute to the way in which the Festival organisers, Syima and Irna, have turned their dream into the wonderful diverse programme of the Festival.
I pay tribute to all those of you who have helped them to realise that dream.
I wish you luck in your exciting and important adventure.

The political noise around the 2013 PISA results was much as expected but, as the heat dies down, it is to be hoped that more light will emerge. Sam Freedman’s blog at http://samfreedman1.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/10-things-you-should-know-about-pisa.html is a good start.
First, a cultural contrast. Far East countries do much better in PISA than countries in the West. Cultural factors are clearly coming into play here. The BBC News on 2 December followed a teenage Korean girl through a school day and into crammer school in the evening, ending with the chilling line that she went to bed at 2 a.m. and will get up at 6.30 for another long day of study the next day.
I have visited several Japanese secondary schools and was unimpressed by the quality of teaching or the way in which children were learning during the school day. Generally, the teacher was standing at the front addressing a large class, many of whom were not listening, knowing that they would be doing the real work at the juku in the evening.
I have met nobody in the UK that believes that we should adopt such long hours of work for young people. I know of no research that provides evidence to demonstrate that the quality or quantity of learning is proportional to the time spent in front of the teacher. It is surely far better to have shorter learning hours and concentrate on providing high quality teaching and learning so that the benefit of those hours is maximised and children can have a life outside school.
Second, a curriculum point. Education is about far more that what is tested by PISA. Good independent and state schools in this country have long recognised that the school curriculum is much bigger than the national curriculum and, whatever instructions come down from the government, they want to provide every young person with a fully rounded education that makes them work-ready, life-ready and ready for further learning, as was widely recognised at the recent Whole Education annual conference by John Cridland of the CBI, David Puttnam and many other speakers.
And, whisper it to your colleagues – or shout it from the rooftops – Singapore and other countries at the top of the PISA tables have recognised that PISA only tells part of the story. So they are putting in place national curriculum ideas that promote creativity and other personal qualities and skills that no longer get a mention in the national curriculum in England. As Andreas Schleicher of the OECD – the holder of the PISA flame – wrote in the Times Educational Supplement on 16 November 2012: “Today schooling needs to be much more about ways of thinking, involving creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making.” Young people need to develop their skills as much as their knowledge, not in isolation, but as the warp and the weft of a fully rounded education.
UK countries need to do better at the subjects that PISA tests, but that is only part of the story. We must not forget that education is part of national culture and that every child deserves a broad and balanced education, as the law of England requires.

This talk was given to the Hammamet conference of the British Council to delegates from Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Tunis and the UK.

The average length of the term of office of the Secretary of State for Education since 1944 has been 2.2 years. They come and go and, like a child in a railway signal box, they play with the levers of policy, changing the direction of the education train with disempowering frequency.
So it is very difficult to summarise in 10 minutes ‘Recent developments in English schools’ policy’ – not even UK policy, as Scotland, Wales and N Ireland have their own education ministries and policies.
The main policy levers for ministers are finance, school structures, curriculum, examinations and accountability.
I will speak briefly about three recent policy themes – autonomy, school accountability and leadership.
Autonomy
Since 1988, self-government for schools has increased and the role of the middle tier – the local district authority – has decreased. Schools in England have a huge amount of autonomy – they have complete control over budgets, staff structures and appointments, even in some cases over student admissions (although that is subject to a national code of practice and an ombudsman to adjudicate on fairness). Schools can also choose which other schools they partner with (although more on that in a minute).
Accountability
Autonomy for the management of public services is of course rightly balanced by accountability – lots of it – but there are many complaints from schools that this is not ‘intelligent accountability’, i.e. the accountability levers introduce perverse incentives and drive schools to do things they do not want to do. Since 1988 the accountability levers have been: a detailed national curriculum, national testing at 7, 11, 14, 16 and 18 (although tests at 14 were abolished 5 years ago), published tables of school performance and a tough inspection regime. Schools have felt directly accountable to central government, not local government, and that is a reality particularly for the most self-governing schools. Accountability measures are changing (for the better, I should say) to focus on average performance and less on meeting thresholds. Floor targets lay down minimum performance levels and lead to intervention and sometimes closure for schools that are below the floor target.
School leadership
The greater the autonomy in a school system, the more important is the quality of school leadership. There has been a welcome recognition by government that the expertise in school improvement lies not in government offices, but in the leaders of successful schools. School-to-school support is the main principle of system improvement and schools are encouraged to work in partnerships. The moral purpose of school leaders – to improve the life chances of the young people in their school – has become the wider moral purpose of system leadership in their area or in their group of schools. Many of the best head teachers have become executive heads of groups of schools.
The London Challenge was a huge success, partnering the least successful schools with the most successful, using the expertise of the most successful school leaders, and moving London from the worst performing region in England to the best in ten years. Indeed, London is the only capital city in the western world where school performance is above the national average.
The National College for School Leadership has been important too, keeping England at the cutting edge of school leadership, helping head teachers to use their autonomy effectively and with a moral purpose.
But the balance between accountability and trust, of which we spoke yesterday, is not right, and head teachers have become very vulnerable to losing their jobs if their school has not jumped through the accountability hoops successfully.
England has had 25 years of detailed top-down prescriptive policy on curriculum which has reduced innovation in schools and narrowed curriculum too much to what is in the high-stakes tests, with a particularly detrimental effect on the arts and on vocational education, which is given poor recognition in the accountability measures.
The coalition government is now trying to give schools more curriculum freedom, but this is counter-balanced by the accountability measures and by the schools being in the habit of being told what to do. It is time for schools to stop looking up to government diktat and start looking out to the excellent practice taking place across the system.
Whole Education, which I chair, is an organisation that encourages schools to take advantage of their autonomy and the space in the curriculum (the school curriculum is much bigger than the national curriculum) to give young people a fully rounded education, developing both knowledge and skills – both/and, not either/or. This can be done not as separate lessons in knowledge and skills but as warp and weft of the same education experience. The skills that young people need are for entrepreneurship, yes, but broader than that – to make young people work-ready, life-ready and ready for further learning: good aims for any school system.
Complementing this, the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, which I also chair, trains teachers and examiners to raise the quality of the assessments that support the pedagogy and that test the students at the end of the course.
Other third sector organisations, such as the Curriculum Foundation and the National Education Trust, also work to support innovation and good practice in schools, not from a theoretical standpoint, but by spreading the excellent work that is happening in the best, most innovative schools.
The other welcome recent development is increased emphasis on the use of evidence in school practice. Alas, it is not yet matched by the use of evidence in policy making, as the train continues to change direction at dizzying speed.
There are, I hope, many lessons here for the developing systems of education in North Africa. Spread the best practice widely and use the policy levers wisely, on the basis of evidence; but please, not too frequently.

On behalf of all the graduates here this morning, thank you, Vice-Chancellor. It is a huge honour for me to receive this honorary degree, 45 years to the day since I graduated in maths and economics with an undistinguished 2:2, a wealth of experience from university life and a determination to make the world a better place.

All of us are grateful to the university in so many ways for the opportunities it has given us, whether we are 21 with our whole working life in front of us or, I observe among some of us, rather more than 21 and taking a new direction in life as a Nottingham graduate.

Here we are today, dressed in our gowns and in front of our friends and family, as recognition that what we have done at Nottingham matters; that education matters; that those of us here who are over 21 are symbolic of the joy of being lifelong learners.

Learning is a journey, not a destination, and our degree today is a signpost on that journey – recognition of the road travelled and an encouragement to the next stage.

Whatever our background and country of birth – and there are a great number of countries represented here today – Nottingham University has created opportunities for us all. Whatever degree we have, what matters now is how we use the knowledge and skills learned here. In life it’s not what we are, but what we do that matters; it’s not the degree we have, but what we do with that degree. Lifelong learning means the striving for continuous improvement in whatever our field of employment or voluntary service, responding to challenges and adapting to changes whenever they occur and whatever they are.

Unlike the crusty old teacher who had spent 40 years in the same school – not so much 40 years’ experience as one year’s experience 40 times. But the secretary of state, no less, came to the school to make a presentation to him. ‘Congratulations on your 40 years’ service here’, the politician said, ‘You must have seen many changes in that time.’ ‘Yes,’ said the old teacher, ‘and I’ve resisted every one of them.’

We cannot know how we will use our degree. As the great economist, J.K. Galbraith said, ‘There are two types of people who predict the future: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know that they don’t know.’

And economics graduates would be wise to remember that Galbraith also said: ‘In economics the majority is always wrong.’ And ‘There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose.’

So, we must say and do what we believe is right, make today a stepping stone for the next stage of our learning – and remember that, in an age of change, learners inherit the earth, while the those who think they know everything are equipped only for a world that no longer exists.

Today is a great milestone, so please join me in thanking our families for their love and support and the University of Nottingham for everything that it has given us during our time here.

The government is attempting to change too much too quickly in the exam system. Simultaneous changes to A-level and GCSE will put at risk many years of steady development. Many people believe that changes are needed – but not all at once – and the strongest voice of caution is coming from the regulator at Ofqual.

In letters to the secretary of state and in an interview in the Times Educational Supplement, Glenys Stacey is sending out clear signals that Ofqual is keeping a watchful eye on the pace of reform and may use its powers to slow down Michael Gove’s fast-moving ambitions on A-level and GCSE.

The TES reports that the regulator believes that “there is a question about whether the system would be able to cope with the simultaneous introduction of reformed GCSEs and A levels in September 2015, as the government wants”. The TES also states that Ofqual has yet to decide whether introducing non-tiered GCSEs that are tougher but still accessible, as proposed by Michael Gove, is achievable. Tiering may be with us for longer than the government wants, the TES predicts.

The proposed reform timetable is also an issue for Ofqual, as it is for the awarding organisations, which will have to re-write GCSEs and A-levels at the same time, and for the teachers who will have to change their approaches to GCSE and A-level simultaneously in English, mathematics, history, geography and the sciences.

Glenys Stacey said: “What we need to understand is whether what government now wishes by way of A-level reform can be managed by exam boards as well as new GCSEs, and if we think it can’t then we have to say that that will create a risk to standards or a risk to delivery.”

My recent blog, “Six-point plan to restore public confidence in exams”, proposed the following: Strengthen Ofqual; professionalise the exams workforce; clarify the purpose of each exam; re-affirm that exams are criterion-referenced; re-calibrate points score equivalence; and reform exams by evolution, not revolution.

I noted then that Ofqual’s warning had been critical in persuading the secretary of state to change his mind about introducing an EBC to replace GCSE. In a letter to the secretary of state, Glenys Stacey stated: “the aims for EBCs may exceed what is realistically achievable through a single assessment”; and expressing her concern at “introducing completely new qualifications and removing provider competition at the same time”.

In her letter to the secretary of state on 6 February 2013 on the revised GCSE reforms, she stated: “If problems arise, Ofqual would, if necessary, delay the reforms.”

That’s strong language for a regulator – and welcome news for awarding organisations and teachers who capacity for change is being taken for granted by the government.

A particular worry is the way in which grades can be standardised as GCSEs and A-levels move from one system to another. Grade descriptions are notoriously difficult to define precisely, which is why Keith Joseph’s laudable intention to move from the inevitable limitations of norm-referencing to the fairer criterion-referencing was never fully implemented and why we still have a system based on evidence drawn from statistical analysis as well as evidence from expert judgement of students’ exam scripts. The standard of each grade is, as we saw in 2012, not a simple matter to determine and it becomes much more complicated as we move from one system to another.

The Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA) has now started a programme of training of awarding body senior staff and examiners, leading to accreditation of examinres by the Institute. This professionalising of the assessment and examinations workforce is a necessary pre-cursor to maintaining standards as wemove from one system to another.

But – as in the sixth point of my plan – any exams reform is likely to backfire if it is introduced too quickly, so evolution, not revolution, should dictate the pace of change. Ofqual is our best hope of keeping government ministers under some sort of control.

The name of a school can tell people a lot about what happens inside. But secondary school names have been changing with unprecedented speed over the last ten years, first with a trend to put the specialism in the title (“Millfield Science and Performing Arts College”), often under pressure from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT). Now ‘schools’ are becoming ‘academies’, either by choice or diktat. Others have changed ‘school’ to ‘college’. Some have put ‘The’ at the front. The school name game is a competitive sport!

Comprehensive schools were never bog-standard, but they were mostly called ‘comprehensive’ in the name on the gate. For some years, I have observed in the attendance list at the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) very few school leaders with ’comprehensive’ on their delegate badge.

At the 2013 annual conference, the 1150 people attending included 950 from schools, mostly in England, but with a sprinkling from Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and further afield.

Of those 950, just 5 were senior leaders of schools with ‘comprehensive’ in their title, in spite of all-ability secondary schools being the large majority.

OK, so the words on the tin don’t necessarily have to describe the contents – who would guess that Pledge is furniture polish? And lots of schools try to encapsulate something of their ethos in their title:

70 of these 950 schools (7.5 per cent) included the faith designation in their title and many more gave a strong hint in that direction without actually stating the religious affiliation – Bennett Memorial Diocesan School or St Peter’s School, for example. Some take this description further, squeezing more information about the school into the name – St Catherine’s School for Girls or Cardinal Newman Catholic School and Community College, for example.

120 schools of the 950 (12.5 per cent) use the word ‘academy’ in their title, an ancient and honourable description of a state school in Scotland, but a much newer title for such a large number in England.

90 schools (9.5 per cent) use the word ‘community’, expressing publicly the idea of the school serving its community, although parental choice now means that some schools barely know what community they serve, so diverse and distant have their catchment areas become.

Some school call themselves a ‘Community College’, or just a ‘College’.

The most popular designation for a secondary school now (190 out of 950 – 20 per cent) is ‘High School’, which says nothing about the nature of the school or its ethos – Oakfield High School, Woodside High School – but often includes its location – Wetherby High School, Uxbridge High School.

In spite of the end of the specialist schools funding, 60 schools (6 per cent) have their specialisms sufficiently embedded in their ethos to have retained it in their title, with Sports College the most popular, followed by Technology College, Engineering College, Arts College and Languages College, in that order, with a single Maths and Computing College trailing in this category among the ASCL conference attendees.

It is this group of schools that, combined with their faith designation, provide the contenders for the longest school name, especially where more than one saint is included – Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Engineering College (since when was engineering a peaceful activity, you may ask), Our Lady and St Chad Catholic Sports College, Brownedge St Mary’s RC High School and Sports College, which, like several other schools, includes both ‘school’ and ‘college’ in its title. Ashington Community High School and Sports College scores in at least three of our categories.

Another bid for distinction comes from the schools that include ‘the’ at the front of their title – The Holy Cross School, The Charter School.

The shortest school name represented at the ASCL conference was Erith School – the same number of letters as Eton College. Who needs a long name?

Add to this a Village College or two, a Learning Village, a Senior School and a Studio School and the diversity of English secondary school names is almost complete.

405 out of 950 (43 per cent), however, eschew any of these additions to their name and remain just ‘School’ – Priory School, Sydney Russell School, Bohunt School, for example.

I have always been a strong supporter of the comprehensive principle, believing that good schools have ‘diversity within’. So the agenda of successive governments to create ‘diversity between’ schools, seemingly without recognising the diversity that exists anyway between schools of similar type run by different people in different communities, creates unnecessary divisions and, this being England, diversity is always turned into hierarchy.

Diversity of schools has become entropy of names. Is there a hierarchy there too?